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Office of International Affairs (OIA)

NTIA’s Office of International Affairs (OIA) formulates and promotes national telecommunications and information policies for presentation in multilateral and international organization settings. OIA also engages in advocacy directly with counterparts in foreign governments and the European Union. OIA draws on its extensive policy and technical expertise to support U.S. negotiators and interagency delegations in strategic international forums.

OIA plays an important role in the formulation of the Administration’s international information and communications technology strategies. OIA’s aims include improving market access for U.S. industry, promoting access to and use of information and communications technologies by U.S. commercial interests, and supporting U.S. foreign policy goals such as improved economic development and promotion of U.S. national security interests through access to and use of such technologies.

For example, OIA provides key support to the Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force, focused on new policy development and outreach strategies on commercial data privacy, cybersecurity, global free flow of information, and online copyright protection. OIA also advocates for the international recognition of Internet policy-making principles that support multi-stakeholder policy development processes to address cutting-edge policy questions.

In addition, OIA supports NTIA’s role as the executive branch expert on issues relating to the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) and its security, a critical aspect of the Internet infrastructure. In this regard, OIA represents the U.S. government in its interactions with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the not-for-profit corporation that coordinates the DNS, and oversees a series of legal agreements related to the creation of the global Internet address book as well as the management of the .US and .EDU top level domain names.